Migrating literacies: multimodal texts and digitally enabled text making

Abstract

This article examines the social shaping of texts in digital environments and proposes the notion of migrating literacies to theorize how urban youth materialize meaning using grammars of digitally enabled design. A working definition of migrating literacies identifies digitally enabled text making as having social, technological, and semiotic affordances for managing affiliations across discourse communities. Drawing from ethnographic data, the analysis will account for the appearance of cultural remix through the shaping of multimodal ensembles and how they move across digital spaces. Key findings contribute to the need for addressing the challenge of multimodality to understanding shifting notions of text in an increasingly diverse and digital society. © 2014 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston.